They're like anything only as good as the programs that utilise them. The ones I've seen didnt give much sense of depth from what I remember. Because it only ever gives one perspective the 3d nature of what I saw cant offer much more than simulated 3d on normal displays, moving your head still doesnt do anything, other than stopping the 3d working.

I saw a demo of a molecular visualization program running on one of these at the American Chemical Society convention a couple months ago.

In general, I'd say the quality is quite good. The image I saw had about 6 or 8 inches of apparent "depth" between what appeared to be closest to me and what was furthest away. It was reasonably clear, although not quite as clear as the flat image. You seem to lose some resolution (horizontal resolution, at least) when it goes into 3D mode.

Of course, one of the big deals about it is that it doesn't require glasses, so nothing to lose, no flickering, etc. This does mean that there is a fairly small "sweet spot" that your head has to be in in order to see the 3D display. If you're positioned outside of this the display looks like a mess. I don't think more than one person can really see the image at a time when it's in 3D mode (there's a big button above the keyboard for switching between 2D/3D).

I'm not sure what the API is like for getting a program working with the 3D functions. It was being demoed by a software company, and the guy there gave me the impression that some amount of modification to their app had been necessary (ie that most 3D apps wouldn't work correctly without being adapted) but that it hadn't been too difficult. 'Course you've generally got to take tech info from salesfolk with a grain of salt.

I have seen the auto-stereoscopic displays by sharp on a holography conference in San Jose, CA (2004). Basically: it works.

These devices use a thin grating over the screen to ensure that each eye sees only the pixels of one view. The viewing angle is constrained, but that is not an issue for laptops (there is probably only one person watching anyways).

If you have ever seen an IMAX 3D movie, it is a bit like that. There was a video clip where objects seemed to hover in front of the screen, and they had a funky stereoscopic UI (windows in the backgroud would seem to be further away from the viewer).

Obviously the main problem is resolution: they have to throw away half the pixels to provide two views...

I expect that many 3D applications would work out of the box. Standard hardware (NVIDIA quadbuffer cards) can already render stereoscopic scenes transparently (this is why you can hook up a pair of good old vr glasses to an NVIDIA card, and run any opengl app in stereo mode).

The 3D displays work. I have a DTI2018XLQ at home. It works by creating sepearate "zones". You place your head so that each eye is in a different zone. What happens is that each eye sees a diffrent image. I have only used the monitor for 2 games (MC2 & NWN) as I am not into FPS games.
http://www.dti3d.com/Products/dti_2018xlq.htm

you know, seeing integrated wifi that works with linux would be a real plus on a laptop like this. Especially if it were a non-centrino wifi card built in.

I have a Gateway 450SX non-centrino, and it runs linux really well. Everything works perfectly (except for the 56K modem, of course), but sadly I don't have internal wireless. My external WaveLAN card works great under any distro though. Rock stable laptop, not terribly expensive and everything runs great under any distro (I've tried Fedora Core 1, Gentoo and Debian).

Since $3,000+ is a bit outside my range (my range being closer my $35 PII Linux box [retrobox.com]), I naturally checked out the Emperor Linux Jobs Page [emperorlinux.com] to see if I could suppliment my income. What a blast from the pre-bust past, mixed with a bit of post-bust reality:

Work at EmperorLinux: the most fun you can have with...

EmperorLinux is not actively hiring.

However, we are always on the lookout for fun and knowledgeable people who like things Linux. If you like to:ride your bike to work,hike in the mountains,recompile your kernel weekly,drink Mountain Dew with extra sugar,play in the dirt with your hands,make fun and informative web pages,use the "taste test" when debugging circuits,run with scissors barefoot in the rain,or anything similarly off-center,

send us an interesting mail telling us why you think we would like you.

I've done nearly all of those things, if you can substitute "hand-code Z80 machine code" for "recompile your kernel". But I think I'll stick with my boring but very stable job coding VB in the tax accounting business. I'll have time to lick random circuitry when I retire.

I've done nearly all of those things, if you can substitute "hand-code Z80 machine code" for "recompile your kernel".

No. You're obviously some geezer who might have some experience with punch cards and COBOL but knows nothing about pointless fiddling with Lunix. Go run with scissors in the rain some more and then send your resume to EDS. Maybe they'll give you an employee discount on an old PRIME.

> What a blast from the pre-bust past, mixed with a bit of post-bust reality

-nod- And for the most part, it's straight-up. The atmosphere there is very easygoing. I worked there for quite a while, and still do part time. As compared to the hoops I jump through reporting time at my other job, the official time reporting instructions at emperor are "email me a float on the tenth of the month"

Since the description said "if you like to...", I figured I could include my mid-'80s TRS-80 coding skillz as the old-school equivalent of compiling your Linux kernel.

BTW, I'm not talking about using EDTASM (editor/assembler)... my first Z80 coding was in binary. You'd have an opcode like 101xxx11, where xxx depends on which register you're referencing, and I'd plug in the bits, convert to decimal, and POKE the routine into memory. Saving before running was essential, but painful -- all I had was cassette tape storage.

I did the same thing with my old Sinclair too. It was the 2068, Timex built for the US market and similar but not identical to your Spectrum if memory serves. It's really amazing to think of how much we used to do with a CPU running at single-digit megaherz rating and RAM banks that topped out well before reaching three digits. Fact is, I did things with that equipment and the software that came with it that are virtually impossible with todays machines.

My laptop is 2D. I hate the way it's so flat. It's horrible to type on because the keys have no travel. It's easy to bend and tear by accident. Sometimes it's really hard to see because when you look at it edge on it has no thickness. It disappears in piles of paper. A 3D laptop would be much better!

I used to have the same problem with a 2D Linux laptop until I installed Gentoo. I had so much time on my hands waiting for KDE to compile that I learned origami and now it's not flat anymore - it's sort of... crane shaped.

EmperorLinux had to uninstall M$Windows before installing Linux because the 3D laptop is not available unbundled with an M$Windows license.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

We don't HAVE to uninstall Windows. Customers who want to dual boot are more than welcome to. Customers who only want Linux can have that, but are advised that they will still have a Windows license. Simply put, at our volumes it is impossible to get machines from a big-name vendor without Windows. Hell, at most people's volumes this is impossible. Microsoft has very strong contracts with laptop suppliers.

But like I said, customers who want Linux only are advised they will still be paying for Windows because we have to. Almost none of them care, because they understand the situation.

Thanks for the correction. The main point stands however; the M$ tax is still included in the price of the laptop, whether they're using M$Windows or not, thus making true price competition on the OS impossible.

Thanks for the reply. I guess I didn't fully understand the situation. Best of luck. Knowing that hardware on certain machines is supported in Linux is very helpful but, for me, it isn't worth the extra $600 for the install. My budget is too small.

Well, the modem doesn't work. If you need dial-up, the company selling these babies should provide a PC Card solution. For me, however, the important thing is whether or not the RJ-45 port works, so I can run Ethernet connectivity.

Near as I can tell, it's just the 56K software modem that doesn't work.

The added value comes in the various tweaks they've made to their Linux OS. It also looks like you have to be a customer to get a copy of it, so you can't cheap out and buy a laptop for half the price of theirs.

Is it worth the extra 600 bucks? I think if I were going to pay 3 grand for a laptop, I might consider it. Linux can be difficult to get to work correctly on laptops, but $600 is nothing to sniff at.

Well, you can "cheap out" and buy the laptop on your own then send it in for a Depot Install [emperorlinux.com], but the prices come out to about the same as if you bought the laptop from us. The price includes not only the laptop and distro tweaks: it also includes a year of email and phone support. So not only do we help you get Linux, we help you keep it running.

You're not just paying for having Linux installed. You're paying for support - an actual human on the phone if the machine craps out, or someone to personally reply to your mail. It's also the research that went into making all the hardware work, tracking down drivers, etc.

What a lot of people don't understand here is that big companies, educational institutions, and research groups just don't care about the price. To them, the support, assurance that everything works, and time savings are worth the ext

It's discouraging to see someone actually selling a Linux laptop that doesn't even support all of it's own hardware. Yes, it's a minor 56k modem, and it does 3D, but can't we step back a second? Ship a 2D laptop that can run any flavor of Linux, then work on getting the way cool features to work.

Notice the 256MB Lexar USB keychain drive; For $120.00. Same item is selling for under $50 on Newegg. Yeah, EmperorLinux seems like the kind of site I'd like to do business with. I wonder if they ever sold toilet seats to the Pentagon.

And $50 Logitech mouse [logitech.com], that you can buy direct from Logitech for half that, and probably even less at any retail store without even needing a sale. Or the $150 3COM 802.11b/g PC card [3com.com] that you can pick up for 60% less anywhere else. Or even their 60GB hard drive upgrade for $500, that I can get for less than half price in Canadian funds, ignoring the exchange rate, here [ncix.com] and it's a faster drive, too!

For anyone who's buying from them, stay away from the accessories. Mice are universal, PS/2 or USB. Lapto

For some strange reason, I don't agree with that. If you are looking to go the cheap route for a linux laptop, you are better off installing it yourself. But, if you want simplicity, the extra money is nothing. In addition, spending a bit more is nice to support a company that is trying to be good.

But because I am a raging hypocrite, in a few weeks I'm buying an Apple notebook.:P My first time without a linux laptop since buying a brand

At $3600, it will be something of a luxury laptop and a gizmo, considering the number of Linux users who are in disciplines that deal with 3D imaging. Except, perhaps, game and movie designers I think. Most molecular imaging people that I know use SUN, SGI or HP hardware still. I don't think that stuff like RasMol or Cn3D (for protein structure viewing) currently supports it. Knowing the Linux community, it pobably soon will be. Then, this machine can potentially be a great tool for scientists. You can go and view all of your proteins in 3D which will help immensely with the interpretation of mutations for instance, while avoiding the need for proprietary hardware and OSes. Then we can break free of friggin' MS. You won't believe how many times I cannot fill out a grant application because it's a.exe.. A vital app such as 3d molecular imaging should be a good place to start.

I read about this technology when it was launched in Japan, but I have concerns about the viewing angle that allows to watch the screen in real 3D.
In fact this technology is based on the same as the small cards made of plastic and paper, that allow you to see a kind of animated 3D caracters.
And here, even with explanations on sharp site, I would say that there should be some problems when you are not exactly in front of your screen... If someone has got an answer about this accuracy.
Moreover, this technology is not used for professional 3D computer visualization.

It's called a lenticular image, if I'm understanding you correctly. That grooved piece of plastic on the surface is a lenticle (a type of lens basically) and it allows vertical (or horizontal but in this case vertical) strips to carry different information. You could turn the laptop 90 degrees and just see a mess.

Of course, but this did not depend on limitations due to LCD technology, while, it is the case here.
Dissociation of the 2 pictures is done on the same screen, depending on the viewing angle for each eye. This is a real technology limitation because with this, nothing can prevent you from mixing the 2 pictures. Other solutions involve a physical separation of the 2 eyes, with 3D lenses that have a filter that select the eye intended to see each picture out of an animation, or tiny video projectors that disp

Everything in a laptop is a tradeoff game. Want fancier graphics/more powerful CPU/wireless/faster hard drive? You're gonna pay for it in weight and power consumption. Want to lighten the machine a bit? You're gonna pay for that in display size and power consumption. This thing essentially has two video displays crammed on top of each other to provide the 3D effect, which really kills the battery life. But if the display is the most important aspect to you, you're probably going to toss it on a desk a

Keep in mind that Emperor Linux purchases name-brand laptops with windows and removes the windows. You're paying for windows you're not using. For a list of companies that sell linux laptops and do not do this check here [mcelrath.org].
-- Bob

The companies on this list sell either used laptops or non-brandname laptops. As noted on the site, this isn't much of an issue as far as components, but it is for support. There will be no hardware or warranty support with these machines.

No attempt at deception is being made here. The laptops come with windows, and most people want them that way. If you don't want windows, we'll remove it for you. No lies, no smoke and mirrors. You simply aren't going to find a laptop from Sharp, IBM or Dell that d

So, the Linux drivers [nvidia.com] exist, and I know they have hardware-accelerated OpenGL support built in... Does anyone know if this machine+display combo will work "out of the box" without any tweaks to applications?

An option or two applied to XF86Config is OK by me, but per-application mods would be a little excessive... Anyone tried UT2K4 [unrealtournament.com] on one yet?

I love linux. I do. But I hate reading about a linux company putting out a linux machine with the sentence "Almost all the hardware features can be utilised under Linux;" What's with the "almost"? Why can't ALL of the hardware features be "utilised" under linux. C'mon this isn't BeOS we're talking about.

Sorry, but I would like to state my opinion: what the f**k? this is news? When I installed Mandrake 9.2 and later 10.0 on my 1 year old toshiba satellite, everything worked ok (3d graphics, firewire, but not the SD cardreader...) I dont really see the news in this article. But thats OK, but what really pisses me off is that anyone still uses the memory stick thingy. I dont ever want to have that proprietary shit be part of what I buy again. I have a Zaurus with SD card reader and CF card reader. Two nice st

Immediately I had a few thoughts without RTFA. With an afterthought 3d algorithm the proportions won't be accurate. I could see real use for this with topology or for an avid gamer, but if the programs aren't able to pass spatial information for the screen why bother? I can appreciate a proof of technology and anything linux must be great..right, but this just seems a little too early.

It says 3D because it gives the perception of a 3D display. And yes, you can display 3D images on a flat LCD. It works by using "channels" which divert light to the other side at an angle so your eye percieves it as a different image.

You remember those 3D things you got when you were a kid? where you look at it from one side it has an image... and if looked at on the other the picture is different yet? Giving you the appearance it was moving if you twitched it? Same concept? Only the light is emitted from the left and hitting the right side. The light emitted from the right is hitting your left side.

Both of your eyes recieve two different images and they are done in sync giving the impression of 3D so you can see depth.

The 3D things I got when I was a kid were GI Joes and such. The little holographic light shifting thingies are cool (in the sense that cool means gives you a headache) but are very much 2D. 3D means that there are 3 plains of reality. 2 with a cool way of reflecting the light simply isn't.

Point is... the screen gives you the perception of depth. If the screen can fool your brain into thinking that there is an image in the foreground and others farther in the distance... than the IMAGE is 3D no matter how you slice it and by difinition. It doesnt matter if you can't stick your hand though there and touch the background image. They never said 3D virtuality... its 3D imagery.. and by that definition it is 3D.

First, I am confused. GI Joes came with two different varieties of flashy things that you might be referring to:

1) Polarized plastic with an two images drawn in alternating lines behind it, so that when tilted, animation is viewed. I believe the action figure Crystal Ball used one of these as a weapon. These are not 3d.

2) Actual holographs printed on the stickers that came with vehicles, etc. These are 3d, in the sense that you can, to a degree limited by perspective, see behind objects depicted in these holographs; there is actual depth.

I am reminded of the scene in The Little Prince where the character from outer space looks at a drawing of a box and states that it is a picture of a sheep. When the narrator corrects him, the alien says, "Well, there's a sheep sleeping in the box."

Probably mangled the quote, but you get the drift. Holograms allow you to see their contents from many perspectives within 3d space. And as long as that definitition is met, then they qualify as 3d.Even if the viewing medium is 2d.

I was not referring to either "flashy thing" I was referring to a 3 dimensional object, an action figure. something which lives in a 3 dimensional world.

there is no "actual depth" (beyond a half millimeter or so) of a sticker. The image printed on the sticker surely has no depth.

What I am saying, rather poorly it seems, is that any object which is printed, is not 3D. There is _no_ way to project a 3D object onto a 2D surface. It is possible to create a perception of 3D if the eyes were completely sepa

I think everyone knows what it means. The 3RD dimension is depth. As long as your brain THINKS there is depth it is 3 dimentional. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck.. it is a duck. If you see depth (which is the 3rd dimension) you are seeing 3D.

The term 3D does not reference any type of technology or process therein. 3D is perceived vision. If I see depth... the 3rd diminsion is there.

It turns out that your perception of something has nothing to do with wether or not it is there. If you take a little LSD and see a battleship sailing down broadway, it does not mean that the ship is there.

My point was that it is not "a 3D screen." The fact remains one day we will compleate the existance of decent 3D displays and then everyone will realize that we have called 2D "3D" for many years and think about how silly that was. If you look today at this type of screen and then remember that we cal

The viewable angle on these computers in 3-D mode has got to be awful. 10 degrees off and you lose your picture entirely, since they use "an optical parallax barrier" to control which eye sees which pixel.

I think my neck would start to hurt after more than 10 minutes of game play from trying to hold still.

"It says 3D but it still has a flat, 2D LCD screen. I wish people would quit throwing that word around until we have a true 3D display."

It is true 3D. It produces exactly what your eyes percieve as 3D imagery. The term you're really looking for is 'volumetric'. When somebody offers a volumetric display, then you got what you're hoping for.

(Note: This is one of the least impressive nitpicks I've seen in a long time. It is three dimensional if it does video. x, y, t. If it was what he was looking fo

It is not true 3d as there is no depth of field effect. Yes there is a 3d effect from the left right info, but your eyes are focused on the flat screen even when you are concentrating on a near or far object. This is the main cause of the sick feeling and headache that this type of display can cause, as the focus of your eyes is not corresponding to what you are actually looking at.

Correct it's not 3D.If it was true 3D you could walk around the scene and view it from different sides, or at least change your angles.

Computer graphics people sometimes call this 2 1/2D.It's also obvious from an information theory viewpoint. The information you need for this 2 1/2D image is only twice then need form simple 2D (one image for each eye). A true 3D representation would require much more information.

This isn't a laptop built for normal business or student customers. This is a laptop made for engineering and science applications where people have been used to dropping 10 or so grand 10 years ago for the same functionality in a workstation. For instance here is a nutty situation, crystal eyes pioneered LCD shutter glasses. OK, now you can buy good lcd shutter glasses for about $100 dollars, but if you want to buy crystal eyes its about $1000. Now the build quality of the crystal eyes are better, and the

My personal experience with the RD3D is that, yes, it is very particular about your position. You need to position your head in the center of the display area and particular distance away from the monitor in order to see anything. There's a little colored bar at the bottom of the screen that turns red as you get closer to help you find this spot.

Glasses may allow a bit more leeway in this respect, but if not using the happy headache-inducing shutters mentioned in another comment, the display method woul